When Diane Morgan, a petite cookbook author, says she once backpacked with 70 pounds, I could see it.

She can carry a heavy load.

Her 17th cookbook, Roots: The Definitive Compendium with More Than 225 Recipes (Chronicle Books, $45), a 431-page tome is like that 70-pound backpack. And it really is the only cookbook you’ll need to get into the under-appreciated, somewhat feared, sometimes maligned, untapped world of cooking with root vegetables.

North America’s tepid relationship with root vegetables might have everything to do with our uninspired cookery methods – roasting, boiling steaming, without enhancing, adding or manipulating flavours, taking them into the OMG realm.

“We don’t have the breadth of recipes. If you look at what Indian or Asian or Latin American cooks do with them, it’s amazing,” says Clark, a Portland native, who was in Vancouver recently. “Here, people don’t know what to do beyond basics. That’s why I wrote the book.”

She turned the rutabaga into a sweet galette. “Their bitterness can be tamed with sweetness and so I braised them with beer. It turned out to be a perfect pairing.”

The chef from Pok Pok (my favourite stop in Portland) taught her how to use coriander root as a paste to use in dishes. She fell in love with lotus root and used it for salads, soups, stirfries and pickled and candied it as well as make an upside-down cake with it. The latter took six tries to perfect.

Over the two and a half years she worked on the cookbook, Morgan worked with a farmer to grow crosne, which she couldn’t find locally. They’re tubers, otherwise called Japanese or Chinese artichokes. “The best description is, they look like little Michelin men. The worst is, they look like white larvae,” she jokes. “You ‘sand’ the outside with kosher salt to get the dirt off.”

Even as a professional cookbook author, Morgan hadn’t come across or know how to work with many of the root vegetables in the book. “I had never worked with salsify or burdock, for instance,” she says. “I’d see some of these vegetables at markets and pass them by.”

A lot of these vegetables, she says are packed with nutrients. “The sweet potato is a superfood. It’s absolutely at the top for nutrition. And beets. They’re packed with more beta carotene than carrots.”

And carrots, she says, originated from Afghanistan and were purple or black, before they followed trade roots to Europe where they preferred them orange.

“Our grandparents got through the winter with root vegetables they stored in root cellars,” she says.

“My hope is that I’ve written a source book so when people see root vegetables in markets, they can buy them, find out about it and make something with them.”

RECIPE

Three-Layer Parsnip Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Parsnips elbow out carrots in this recipe, from Roots by Diane Morgan. “I like the rustic look with just the layers and top frosted, leaving the sides exposed,” she says.

Cake:

Unsalted butter for the cake pans, room temperature

2 cups (500 mL) all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting pan

2 teaspoon (10 mL) baking powder

2 teaspoon (10 mL) baking soda

2 teaspoon (10 mL) ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon (5 mL) kosher or fine sea salt

½ teaspoon (2 mL) freshly ground nutmeg

3 cups (750 mL0 grated parsnips, about 8 trimmed and peeled

1 cup (250 mL) sweetened flaked dried coconut

1 cup (250 mL) chopped walnuts

½ cup (125 mL) raisins

2 cups (500 mL) granulated sugar

1 cup (250 mL) canola or other neutral oil

4 large eggs

Cream Cheese Frosting:

Two 8-ounce (225 g) packages of cream cheese, room temperature

1 cup (250g) unsalted butter, room temperature

2 cups (500 mL) confectioners’ sugar, sifted

1 tablespoon (15 mL) fresh lemon juice

½ cup (125 mL) sweetened flaked coconut for garnish (optional)

To make the cake, position one rack in the centre and a second in the lower third of the oven and preheat to 350 F.

Butter three 9-inch (23 cm) cake pans. Line the bottom of each pan with parchment paper. Butter the paper. Sprinkle each pan with a spoonful of flour and dust the pans.

In large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and nutmeg. In another bowl, stir together the parsnips, coconut, walnuts and raisins.

In mixer, beat sugar and oil until smooth, about 2 minutes, beginning on low then increasing speed to medium. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. On low speed, add flour mixture. Using rubber spatula, fold in the parsnip mixture.

Divide the batter between the three pans. Bake until they just start pulling away from the sides of the pan and toothpick inserted into the centre of a cake comes out clean, 40 to 50 minutes. For even baking, rotate the pans between the racks and rotate them front to back.

Cool in pans on wire racks for 15 minutes. Run a table knife around the inside edges to loosen the cake sides. Invert onto racks and peel off parchment paper. Cool.

Frosting: Beat cream cheese on medium until smooth, about 3 minutes. Add the butter and beat until smooth. Add the confectioners’ sugar and lemon juice and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes.

Place one cake layer, top-side down, on plate. Spread one-third of the frosting over top, to edge. Set second cake layer on top, top-side down. Do the same with the remaining two layers and remaining frosting. Swirl the last layer of frosting. Garnish with coconut if desired.

Refrigerate for at least 45 minutes to set the frosting. Remove from refrigerator 30 to 40 minutes before serving.

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